Farewell, Audio Chat
The Audio Chat tool has been removed from online courses as of Monday, January 14, 2013.
When we launched Audio Chat almost a decade ago, it was a solution that didn't have a comparable equivalent in the desktop world. Now students, faculty, and staff have Skype, Google Hangouts, and the University's Adobe Connect service at their disposal for online conferencing and discussion. These tools offer much better service and many more options than Audio Chat.
Audio Chat is based on aging Flash media technology. The platform on which it's based -- Adobe's Flash Interactive Server -- hasn't gotten a lot of attention in recent years, and there is no solution for this platform which works on smartphones or tablets. Tools like Skype, Google Hangouts, and Adobe Connect are continually updated, have mobile options, and provide much better service overall.
Our logs show that only a handful of students used Audio Chat in the past few years. If you were one of those students, you should definitely look into Google Hangouts or the University's Adobe Connect service. Both are easy to use and provide a much more robust and better designed experience than Audio Chat ever could.